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S2 Ep71: Single Player RPGs
82 Plays6 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about some of the RPGs that shaped their perception of the genre!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Introduction
00:00:17
Speaker
How's it going everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. What you been eating lately, Dave?
00:00:27
Speaker
Literally thought 30 seconds before we started recording of how many answer for how you doing? I was gonna say I'm full of pep I'm full of vigor right and full of tacos, which is my answer for that question tacos You tried pep pretty good pep C. No, no, no happy Happy original.
Podcast Obligations and Humor
00:00:48
Speaker
Yeah, man. Let's see. Um, I
00:00:52
Speaker
No. Train of thought. Gone. Don't know what I was thinking of. But he had tacos. It did. El Charo Negro, which is not. It's OK if you say it's in the name. Shifty eyes. It's not too far from me and you have like the quickest delivery time. Yeah. And their tacos are fairly inexpensive, but very tasty.
00:01:15
Speaker
That sounds pretty good. Yeah, we were talking about recent culinary exploits in the area I'm from and there's a new place. Not happy with it. Tacos aren't that great. Seedings aren't that great. Disappointed. Don't go there. But the purpose of today's episode is to create another episode for the podcast.
00:01:35
Speaker
That is pretty much why we do it It's we're kind of locked actually obligated by ourselves and nobody else right we wrote our own contract to do this once a week Signed it in crane and Jake out of the house because it's now hosted in my house
00:01:51
Speaker
Yeah, that is true.
Overwatch Grand Finals Experience
00:01:55
Speaker
I basically just leave for work, although actually this upcoming weekend, which will have already elapsed by the time people listen to this, I'm going to the Overwatch grand finals in Philadelphia.
00:02:11
Speaker
Oh Which is near where I live. Ah Acme, Pennsylvania Yeah, but like the Wells Fargo Center there I Saw a picture of them like setting up the massive screens that they use. Have you ever seen like the Blizzard Arena? Snapshots of it
00:02:32
Speaker
It's freaking cool. It like, it butterflies. The screen is like a massive LCD that butterflies to the sides and like they'll have, uh, the team colors on one half and the other teams colors on the other and like the LAN, um, computers up in front of it. It's freaking great, but they're setting up a kind of similar setup, uh, and Philly.
00:02:53
Speaker
for, um, the grand finals. So it should be pretty cool. Uh, friends of the show, just, you know, come out, see me, see me while I'm there at the grand finals again. Um, once she listens to this, it will have already elapsed. Everything that's saying that you're hearing now was in the past. That's true. I'm an entirely different person.
RPG Definitions and Humor
00:03:16
Speaker
Oh man.
00:03:19
Speaker
So given that that topic is, you know, kind of pointless to talk about since it is the past, we could talk about RPGs or as some people call them.
00:03:28
Speaker
rocket propelled grenades i did think about that joke today yeah i was thinking about it it's really like oh me and my girlfriend like to uh roleplay a little bit i dress up as a butler and she dresses up as a rocket propelled grenade she misunderstood entirely no it's um
00:03:50
Speaker
It's not that it is kind of unfortunate that those acronyms overlap. Cause I'm definitely, I was, I was more familiar with the term, uh, role-playing game before rocket propelled grenade. Yeah. Which I guess says something nice, you know, about my upbringing. Along with my, uh, dumb joke there, I was trying to think of other things that RPG could stand for. And while I was taking a piss in the afternoon at work, I was like,
00:04:16
Speaker
racist penis galvanizer Where someone would be like I don't like black people and this machine that would just punch them in the dick I was gonna say it's like it's it's a Borderlands weapon that rolled with really weird stats Like well done path of exile right you're just like what is the racist affix actually mean for this game? You can only shoot certain colors of enemies
00:04:46
Speaker
Oh man, I'm just imagining you playing Path of Exile or something. You have to change your skin color and then you can equip the armor. Otherwise it rejects it. That would be bad. I don't think any of the games we have on our list incorporate features that are explicitly racist.
00:05:04
Speaker
No, no. Nor implicitly racist.
Podcast Reflection and RPG Discussion
00:05:08
Speaker
I like to think I'm getting better at segues. Oh, shit. Oh, you. Sweet winter adult.
00:05:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think that that's the most important part of a segue too is that you call it out And then you prevent any actual transition into what you're trying to talk about By calling it out. I just like to loudly state any who in any conversation you're talking about my thing, right? Just walk up to someone else's countries. We're just like My thought of this political climate like any who right have you checked out our podcast?
00:05:43
Speaker
handing out these invisible business cards. Thank you. Thank you. It's just like a bar. So here you go. So legitimately, um, I haven't recently because we're not going to ever get to the topic. No, I mean, I've recently been watching Midas mode, which is mentioned before, uh, moon duck studios, dota two land game event tournament. It's basically replaced the international, I think for notoriety. Yeah, it's, it's pretty great.
00:06:13
Speaker
Where's it going like this? Oh, they were selling off parts of the map to kind of like, you can put whatever there. If you've paid some money, it's usually like me, me pictures. But one person had like a, Hey, this is our podcast. And their thing was specifically, we have as many listeners as.
00:06:31
Speaker
Midas mode 2 has teams. I was like, man, that's good. Why didn't we advertise? But I forget how much it was actually to spend for that. But if it was like 50 or under, I'd drop that for comedic value. And to have more people on the internet judge me.
00:06:50
Speaker
it's it's always interesting when we like talk or think about advertising the podcast because um We don't make any money doing this. So dear god. No, so advertising In that way ourselves as opposed to getting advertisers into the show Would just mean that we make less money
00:07:11
Speaker
I'm just looking to lose as much money as possible. Yeah. It's like, it's already negative. We just do this cause first world problems. We need an outlet. Yeah, that's not wrong. Yeah.
00:07:25
Speaker
Speaking of an outlet, um, we were going to start talking about some, some classic games on the RPG list and maybe like go over some things that we, we like, or we dislike about, uh, these, these games as we go prefacing with like, here's our plan for, here's the outline, what we're going to talk about. Yeah. That will never fucking happen. I want somebody like write it down at the beginning and look, be like, well, they derailed here for a good 20 minutes.
00:07:49
Speaker
I think that at one point I might have actually had hope that we would be able to like Have a more serious topic driven kind of like call and response type format um, but those have never been our best episodes like they're always best right like well, we've never released one and had that been our best we've never like contested I think best episode we usually talk about like what our favorite episodes are at the end
In-depth Shining Force RPG Analysis
00:08:18
Speaker
of the year
00:08:18
Speaker
Which is not yet attained. Like, we're not yet there, but... That thing we did one time. Yeah. I mean, it's recurring, obviously, right? It happened at the end of the year.
00:08:29
Speaker
But going back to There's some music I used for one of the dumb videos I made for the podcast. Yeah, which was the intro to shining force, right? Which is a classic RPG that I grew up on Not from any standard super nintendo console. I specifically played this on an emulator, right? Because that's when I grew up
00:08:52
Speaker
Right, but I thoroughly enjoyed the fuck out of this rpg Because it's one of those hey, there's some generic shit happening with bad people and you're like we gotta fight the bad people But you would have this army of like I think it started with like five or six Yeah, but then it grew to like 12. Yeah, it was turn is it and then it cycles I don't remember if everyone on your team had a turn and then the enemies move. I think so. Yeah
00:09:20
Speaker
Okay, I believe if I remember correctly and I don't know if we played the same one because there's been a few entries in this I'm trying for Shining Force Legacy of great intent. Yeah into intention. I think was the full name rate intention. I believe so It was it was actually hilarious. I'm like, what does this mean? You're just like we think we're the good guys. Oh
00:09:42
Speaker
Yeah, but most people do, you know, like it's kind of hilarious. I don't know if that was a translation thing or what. I got to assume it was. Yeah. But this is like a classic tile combat and everyone has like their standing on the tile animation. Yeah. And moving over mountains took a fucking eternity.
00:10:01
Speaker
Yeah, you had like slower move speed over difficult terrain. Yeah, you just could not move as much in one turn and then Anything that's flying didn't really have that difficulty, right? And centaurs were the best in that game. I found yeah, they were essentially the dragoons Of the army where they were like perfect mid-range because they had decent range as you level them up They were decently beefy. Their damage output was pretty nice
00:10:28
Speaker
So I'd have the main character, Max, who you could rename, but his name was Max. If he died, you lost the game. Yeah, that was a problem.
00:10:37
Speaker
That's a huge issue with some old RPGs. We're like, hey, um, this person is needed for the story. And we're not going to say like, you can give him a life potion or anything. He's just, if he's fucked, you're fucked. Yeah. And you'd have to restart these battles that could take up to an hour. Yeah. They were, they were quite lengthy as you were like trying to tactically approach the enemies and whatnot. Um,
00:10:59
Speaker
Also kind of elaborating off of that protagonist dies and lose the game thing Because maybe we did end up maybe we did play the same one or they named all of the protagonist max I don't know but I also played a character named max and I made the mistake of dropping all of My stat increasing items basically on him like power up health up all of this Because I was like i'm just gonna make him super awesome and beefy
00:11:21
Speaker
because he's the protagonist. Give him the sword that pierces the heavens or whatever, that's fine. But I fell into that, not knowing that eventually I'd go up against enemies that basically cast level X death, and if they cast it against your protagonist and he fails, you lose the entire game. It doesn't matter how beefy you got it, you just never want him actually on the front line against these enemies, so don't do that.
00:11:50
Speaker
Yeah, I was usually trying to have him flank. Yeah. Like you said, I did actually pump everything into him. I was like, you're not gonna die, buddy. Yeah. So I was giving him like hormones and steroids. Just needles sticking out of his arms. I stabbed him a lot. Yeah.
00:12:07
Speaker
But he'd go up against like a unit on the side and he would just big dick give him like the karate chop Yeah, like kill things and want to do hits. Yeah But I'd try and always have him supported by one healing mage. Mm-hmm
00:12:22
Speaker
And one of the things I loved about magic in the system, which is kind of janky but kind of cool, is you can have like your single target spells if I'm gonna hit this person. You can have your AoE of I'm gonna hit people who are in this cross, or as that leveled up, it just became like a bigger diamond tileset.
00:12:42
Speaker
Which it felt really cool. You're like I can hit up to three squares away from here you have like Like that fire mage. I can't remember her name at all, but I specifically remember her it starts with a T. I can tell you that yeah Tris yeah, that's probably not right, but Tris is also a sorceress at least Now I'm thinking of witches right yeah, it's like It starts with a T. Yeah, it's like tea or something like that. I think I could be I
00:13:12
Speaker
But yeah, crazy effective. And then you mentioned like the army sizes. Like you would oftentimes go up against a lot of enemies. Like this is before really advanced AI. So it basically, if I recall mostly boiled down to I'm attacking or I'm retreating.
00:13:28
Speaker
Yeah, so they'd kind of just like path to you and the game would have them I remember in particular an early mission where there was a river kind of bisecting the map and you had to come from the side of all of these mountains this is after you would have got Gong the monk and You could basically there was a bunch of flyers and things and they would all bunch up like at this bridge And you're just sitting here just like casting away spells on the opposite side of the bridge lighten them up and
00:13:56
Speaker
and uh it felt pretty good to like kind of harass them that way um or like you mentioned the um the like centaurs um and how they would have uh more range depending on the weapons because i think you could give them a lance too which actually reduced them to pretty much melee or they could have like a spear i think there's like
00:14:19
Speaker
When they leveled up, I think you might have had a choice between Two class upgrades. Okay. Yeah one was definitely like they were chucking those lances Like it went from that be like holding them down like alongside there. Yeah, let's go say the horse, but it's really their legs Kind of being like on their shoulder and they just fucking eat it at people. Yeah. God is so good. They're really good um
00:14:45
Speaker
Yeah, I really preferred the, uh, the mages in that though, because of the kind of the damage they could put out. Um, and actually it had cool animations because everything had an animation, every enemy attack, every person taking damage. I think it's part of why those combats took so long as you do an action. There's like, and here we go.
00:15:07
Speaker
Okay next person it was kind of interesting how they layered it together as well because you would have You would have your character execute their attack and they would have different attacks based off of whether it was like a physical attack Like or a magical attack and the background would be based off the terrain you're in and the opponents would load in like regardless of how many you hit and it would like cycle through them so it's like I
00:15:33
Speaker
a flying bat takes 15 damage and then goes to the next character and it's like the other flying bat takes like 10 damage and then the next character and it just felt really cool to pull off like awesome aoe's because you're like I'm just gonna sit here and just watch all these people get lit up and uh nah it was it was crazy good um although it did have the um I don't know like how far you got in the the game I never completed it beat it you beat it like three times wow geez I
Ogre Battle 64 Tactical Exploration
00:16:03
Speaker
love that game
00:16:03
Speaker
Yeah, I've never been so proud for hearing someone say that they beat it, but
00:16:09
Speaker
Just beat it. Just beat it. Took his advice. But I remember there was, the protagonist Max had a spell called egress, which allows you to just like pull back from a fight and then you could just restart the fight. So if you wiped out all of the enemies, these high experience value enemies, you could train up your army and then be like, rather than beating this mission, I'm outie restarted. Fuck this shit, I'm out. Exactly. Yeah.
00:16:37
Speaker
And kind of just farm experience that way. If I had the patience, because like I said, those fights were about an hour apiece, if not more or less. Yeah. It's not exactly an hour. It could be greater than or less than one hour. But it may have been an hour. But you couldn't save mid-fight. Yes. At all. You had to always go to a town. You had like go sleep in a bed or talk to a specific person. Like a priest. Or send your well. Yeah.
00:17:06
Speaker
There's some very specific set of actions and there's uh Some little jingle that you had saved you're like, okay now we're good. Yeah jingle complete Yeah, and priests had to revive party members that went down. I remember that so like if you were uh in a part of the game where you had to fight back to back a little bit, um You couldn't make it to a priest to actually revive key party members that might have gone down in the previous fight
00:17:32
Speaker
And then like it's kind of the Pokemon like mechanic of the people that are out and Fighting are the ones like getting an experience But whoever your backup squad is back at your base that you don't care about like that Hans Elvin Archer guy that you know completely neglected to upgrade He had such shitty damage. Yeah, the range was nice. But again, like once you got the centaurs upgraded you're like
00:17:58
Speaker
Uh, yeah, there was another Archer too. I remember there's, there's a female Archer who was just like better than Hans. So I'm just like, see Hans. Um, it's pretty funny. I want to branch off of shining force onto some other RPGs, but not the shining force episode. Two things don't ask you if you remember. Yeah. Do you remember unlocking the bikinis for like the two female characters? I don't know. Maybe that was late game.
00:18:24
Speaker
There was like one for Tia and there's one for I think the elven archer chick. Or she was the healer, I forget. But they were in like these secret spots after battles. You had to like go to a specific tile and like press your interact button. It's like, oh, you found this thing.
00:18:42
Speaker
It all it did was change like the sprite model. I don't think it actually changed the in-game animation right, but I was like Wow, she's so hot These pixels these pixels though you mentioned the just like random click thing I know we're getting off the shining force, but the I do remember there is a ninja I
00:19:02
Speaker
I think you could get somewhere. Yeah, you literally just had to interact with like a random bush. Yes, and it's like welcome to the party So there were there was a ninja and a samurai
00:19:14
Speaker
The samurai's name is Hanzo 100%. There's also like a hamster character you could get through some various means. Also there was Lycan. He was a werewolf. And there's also Blue, the dragon. Who is insanely good if you ever got him to level up to his master tier.
00:19:41
Speaker
Because like he's like a baby whelp dragon, right? Yeah, but then once he's upgraded he just had like this Crazy amount of like blue firestorm. Mm-hmm shit. He just wrecked people. Yeah It's his game was basically the precursor to how to train your dragons. Yeah But upsides of the game It was fun when I was young. Yeah, but some of the downsides it was very lengthy per battle. Mm-hmm very grueling and
00:20:10
Speaker
Yeah. There's also a fixed number of battles throughout the game. Yeah. So it's not like you're going through like final fantasy, kind of having these random encounters to gear you up for a boss fight. If you need to, it's kind of like, here's your fixed set of things. Do this.
00:20:25
Speaker
Yeah. If you wanted to farm egress farming, it was like the only way to really do it. Yeah. It also, as many of the games on this list, it's very slow. And it shares that in common with the next game I had up here, which was Ogre Battle 64, which I played. I got five minutes into this, so I cannot speak too much to it.
00:20:47
Speaker
Yeah. Um, and honestly, this will probably be more brief than the shining force example, but, uh, I really enjoyed it. Ogre battle. When I had it, I think we bought it off of like eBay. Cause I was like, this looks sweet. Um, and it actually, it was really sweet. It's probably its legacy is largely carried on, I think by like fire emblem and other games like that. But ogre battle was another tactics game, much like shining force. Um, except what is a tactics game, Jacob?
00:21:14
Speaker
Oh geez a tactics game usually kind of like top-down perspective turn-based You're dealing with units equipment and composition of different units sometimes And you largely you're you're you're guiding the battle essentially. Yeah versus something like Final Fantasy where you have The school party versus the other party all at once mm-hmm
00:21:40
Speaker
So that's how I would define it. In Ogre Battle's case, it was like even larger scale than Shining Force, where you had a bunch of individual people in the fight. In Ogre Battle, it's like, hey, you have platoons of like people. So this squad has like nine squares and you can populate it with like up to like five people that you can kind of put in like the front formation, middle formation, back formation.
00:22:08
Speaker
And they'll have different abilities actually based off of like where they are in formation But that also will impact like what aggro they're taking dota underlords. Yeah, I mean, I haven't played dota underlords, but yeah, I assume So how many squads can you
Character Development in RPGs
00:22:22
Speaker
have? You could have uh, quite a few I can't remember exactly what the the upper limit was Um, but you could field a lot
00:22:32
Speaker
And they actually had a mechanic for like they had all those classes kind of like shining force but even even more so Where people would oftentimes start off as recruits which are like these little little guys with pikes and they're so small They look like kids. You're basically making kids fight I think But they would have like three pikes and they'd all attack in unison but if the unit started to take
00:22:56
Speaker
damage, the pikemen would start to die off till just one guy with a pike. And if they could get them to 100 experience, then they would be either promoted to a male soldier, like entry level unit, or a female Amazon entry level unit.
00:23:15
Speaker
I think it was determined by the sex of whoever the party leader was for that platoon. Interesting implications, I don't know. You take this bunch of kids with you to train them to be Amazons. The choir boys, you're like, we're going to be Amazons.
00:23:34
Speaker
It was pretty funny but uh, like those unit paths would like branch out so like maybe the amazon's like Uh, they're like archers. They would get enough experience You could like turn them into priestesses who were like really good support units with a bunch of healing Um, and the combat was no control like from you it just happened the opponents and yourselves would take turns attacking
00:23:58
Speaker
And if nobody died after like a couple rounds of attacks, then that's the end of that like engagement. You go back to the overworld map and keep macro in the battle.
00:24:09
Speaker
Okay, so you're setting up for specific engagements. It's kind of like, I don't want to say risk, but kind of like risk. You're like, I'm going to put some units here. If shit goes down, that's all I'm saying. It's just going to happen. Right. And you could have them like charge enemies, be like, oh, run toward those guys. And the unit
00:24:29
Speaker
Overworld speed would be determined by how fast the units are actually in your platoon like in the squad So if you have like a bunch of wyverns in there, you could probably fit two actually because they're big they take multiple squares But they'd be super fast. They could fly over terrain. They could just chase people down and
00:24:46
Speaker
And if you could harry enemies, hitting them from behind gave you automatic advantage. You would always attack first, but also depending on which side the platoon, the squads actually hit each other, they'll face each other. It changes the nine grid, like front and back formations.
00:25:08
Speaker
So if you hit like clerics in the back, they're now in the front line and they have these like crappy light spells. Um, whereas like they're getting torn apart by your frontline. So it was really cool. You could literally like pincer enemies to like screw up their formation. It's pretty dope.
00:25:26
Speaker
It was pretty legit and the classes were awesome. There's a bunch of undead classes like Ghosts and zombies and you could get vampires at some point you could get like all these monsters in your party And there's this whole like You're capturing or liberating cities based off of whether you got you if you take evil people and
00:25:48
Speaker
to a place with bad morale and you claim the city, it's liberated. And if you take good people to a place with good morale and you liberate the city, it's liberate or you capture the city, it's liberated. And then like at the end of the game, the Indians actually changed based off of whether you captured or liberated cities.
00:26:09
Speaker
I had no idea about that. So I kind of like just got to the end and I'm like, why do I suck so much? Like, oh, why am I getting the bad ends? Uh, but it's because I never paid attention to whether cities were captured or liberated. And I didn't know what it meant. Oops. I don't think I had morals in those early days of gaming. Yeah. Or if I did, it was outside of the realm of gaming. Like, eh, it's fine.
00:26:36
Speaker
I think like I cared more about completion. I cared more about making sure I didn't miss things.
RPG Evolution and Divinity 2
00:26:41
Speaker
Like I would have been like the kid with a strategy guide or like downloading walkthroughs from the internet. Because this is like both Shining Force and Ochre Battle were games where you could really easily miss like optional characters. Just super easy.
00:26:59
Speaker
You could revisit the battlefields after you fought them and then like find optional encounters to get new characters with plot and story and all of this. I'm just like how in the world would you ever know this unless like a Nintendo representative told you?
00:27:16
Speaker
That's no reason to buy magazines kids. Yeah Call the what was it like dollar per minute freaking hotline? Hotline Miami Let me look this up slowly pages hmm
00:27:33
Speaker
Oh, I might have been back a page. So of these two, do you prefer more of like the active tactics or do you prefer more of the macro? I think in this case another category we haven't gotten to yet. Right. Do you like the mystery box or do you like one of these other two things we've actually talked about?
00:27:53
Speaker
Give me the white lollipop with the question marks on it. Uh, I think it's lemon. I think like I like ogre battle. Um, although it's probably even slower than shining force, which is like, uh, it's kind of hard to justify, you know, as an adult, um, they had like a training system. So you could like, if you had a bunch of money.
00:28:16
Speaker
Spend it training your guys. Like, no problem. There's a bunch of just cool features that were implemented there that I haven't played in games this entire time since then. I feel like
00:28:31
Speaker
This is kind of a macro statement, I guess, but maybe games have homogenized a little bit since then. And I see more similar features popping up. Um, like when it comes to RPGs, things like that. Now, maybe that's because I play a lot of AAA games and they might be from the same publishers, but you know, I don't know. I miss some of the cool stuff. What is the cool stuff too?
00:28:58
Speaker
Like I like the character development and the risk of like losing main characters. And people basically have said I should play Fire Emblem, but, um, like, Oh, they're holding this book and they leveled up and now they're a witch or something like that. You know, like, and then filling out your squad. I like that. I like the management aspect. Hmm.
00:29:24
Speaker
I really do like the slower progression. Yeah of RPGs whether it was Just getting enough experience to level up and have your stats be a little bit better. You're like Yeah, you do like the little little flex. Yeah or getting an item and something like a divinity to we were like
00:29:44
Speaker
Oh, I'm going to fuck some people up. Yeah. It feels nice to get those little power spikes of progression, or maybe it's a new ability. You're like, Oh, I can use this in conjunction with this. And then you find like these synergies of, Oh, I will always engage with my rogue here. And then they're kind of, we'll be out of position. So we'll have a support unit interact with them to maybe reposition them or cast protection or heal.
00:30:10
Speaker
Yeah, something else but planning goes out and but finding the new ways to approach a situation is choice Yeah, I think that's something like rpgs really excel excel at It's like we talked about um, like Remnant from the ashes recently. I don't actually consider that really an rpg because it lacks A lot of those choices. It's a relatively like you could choose what guns you use You can kind of choose your skill trees, but they don't matter that much
00:30:39
Speaker
But for the most part, even though it's randomly generated, you're going through a linear story, um, or close to linear and you're not given that kind of freedom to choose how you approach each situation. Like you wouldn't like one of these old RPGs or divinity, which is like an extreme example of how do you approach the situation? Yeah. Like they might have limitations as far as.
00:31:04
Speaker
This is let's say shining forge rpg, right? Yeah, this is this person's class These are things that they are limited to do but you can choose Who's in your party? Yeah with something like divinity Yeah, it's kind of everyone starts out with like hey, here's my starting class, but you can build anybody into whatever the fuck yeah, because everything as far as skills in that game is based off of how many points you put into
00:31:29
Speaker
Geomancy necromancy thievery and other things. Yeah, because you need certain levels in a certain Skill area to be able to use that skill but anybody can fucking read a book That's how you throw fireballs. Yeah, but obviously if you had your
00:31:49
Speaker
Melee beefcake, um only put like a single point in the fire Um, he's not like we're doing like high level fire spells. He might use like haste as utility Yeah, and that's fine. That's how you don't judge him for that We don't judge here No, it's just really cool to approach it in which way you want to
00:32:11
Speaker
We actually like, so we talked a little bit like leading up to this episode about where to really draw the line or categorize RPGs and in the pro in the process of listening to you right now, I think that's basically it. It's like the more choice a game has, the more willing I am to classify it as an RPG.
00:32:32
Speaker
I don't think that's the only thing because, you know, I wouldn't consider the tail tail, you know, games, RPGs, but I think it's really important for the, uh, for the genre, basically. Yeah. I think it needs to allow you to kind of get into a character and choose how that character is played. Yeah. So anything that's like, Hey, here's your main character and here's how the story goes. You're along for the ride, but you're not impacting that. Yeah, exactly.
00:33:02
Speaker
Like sure in hitman you can kind of approach things in different ways, right? But you're not Choosing how like you still have to do a very specific action. Yeah, exactly It's nothing like
00:33:19
Speaker
I would argue Witcher 3 is an RPG. Right. I think that's probably a safe argument to make. Like you have your diversity of how you want to level up the character, how you want to interact with every fucking person in the game. And then there's a lot of choices on top of
Zelda Series and RPG Elements
00:33:37
Speaker
that. Right.
00:33:38
Speaker
Do I kill these people? Do I let the other people kill these people? Do I kill the other people? Witcher choices, basically. Do I have sex with these people and then kill them? Witcher choices. Yeah, I feel that a lot. Like even some of the games, it's interesting to compare anything to Divinity because based off of the criteria we've set up, like Divinity is the ultimate RPG, basically.
00:34:02
Speaker
Well, yeah, because that I would say harkens most to classic DND, which is birthplace of a lot of this is how we perceive a magical universe. This is how we perceive taking turns in combat and how time elapses in combat.
00:34:21
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's like it's, it's hard to compare anything to that, but there's, there's other things on the list, like final fantasy seven, which I don't want to really get into because we got to see that save that for the remaster. Right. But like the story is entirely linear, but how you develop the characters, like what choices are you going to farm random encounters? You can try to get all the materia. You're going to learn all the skills. Like those are all things that are entirely up to you. So even though you really didn't have any choices.
00:34:51
Speaker
that really mattered in the story, by the end of it, you still feel attached to them. I got to say, I will still blame the shitty windows PC that I had. That's probably like 95, maybe 98.
00:35:07
Speaker
But basically, it would crash at always a point. But my first playthrough, I mistakenly upgraded any of Iris' items. Spoilers. That was a mistake. Right. Because she doesn't skill that well. You get late in the game, and it's like you're approaching the end boss, and there's better healers out there at that point. What are you doing?
00:35:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's why. But it is cool to kind of like diversify which material you use as far as upgrades. I feel like that's pretty flat across the board for a lot of games too. Usually you're going to have, here's your starter weapon. Here's the next area. Here's a better stuff that you can get.
00:35:45
Speaker
Yeah, um Not as many games as I would like have trade-off weapons. Mm-hmm where it's hey, this is better damage but Right. Hey, it's gonna reduce some of your defense Or you're more simple magic attacks or you're gonna be slower right here all these things So you appreciate devil rooms is basically what I'm hearing I really like risk reward. Yeah
00:36:11
Speaker
Which is pretty much just sex without a condom but It it makes you kind of double down more for like that type of playstyle that you want Which I really appreciate in path of exile. Yeah, cuz a lot of skill trees like hey Your life still is gonna be doubled. You're what? That's really cool. Thanks. Gee. Thanks mister Yeah, it's like but you can never regenerate health passively and you're like
00:36:37
Speaker
What it's like constantly to not die, which is how my one character is built. And it's, it's brutal at times. Right. Cause I want to like blink into an area of enemies. I'm like, I have to cast my attack immediately. Otherwise I'm fucked. Right. Relentless aggression. Yeah. But it is really cool. Cause you have more branching paths that way, rather than a lot of people kind of end up all at one point for how they build a character.
00:37:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think like that choice is key to getting you attached to those individuals. It's like I mentioned Final Fantasy. I'm not attached particularly to any of those characters at this point. I cried. Yeah, I cried. More than once. Right. And I'm sure it's because a lot of time is passed also, but I've also had like less investment in determining the outcome of those characters than some other things.
00:37:34
Speaker
here on the list and That would have been a great segue if the next game would have been related to that somehow, but nope, it's Zelda Like so yeah, I mean I've played probably ocarina of time was my first yours mask after that then a couple other games and I
00:37:57
Speaker
I think in particular with like Ocarina of time, it's a good example of a game where the protagonist is sort of blank. I mean, link by definition is usually sort of blank. He doesn't talk. So yeah, the thing is like he does eventually like at least other people respond to you as though you talk.
00:38:19
Speaker
Not in Ocarina, you're entirely like deaf, but I played like breath of the wild and you literally choose dialogue responses to people other than just, yes, no, I want you to repeat what he said. Right. Yeah. But I mean, in that role, you're kind of the silent protagonist for the most part of the zone series.
00:38:43
Speaker
where you are, you are long, but you're still going through a linear progression. You still need to hit these certain check boxes of you need to get this gear to beat this boss, to do X, Y, and Z to eventually beat the game. There's not as much diversity. Cause usually if I recall, I didn't play as much Zelda. I played some of Ocarina of Time and I recently bought Link's Awakening. That's kind of my extent. Yeah.
00:39:14
Speaker
But you need certain gear to beat certain dungeons. Right. It's usually, Hey, we're going to introduce this new mechanic. You have this thing later when you go back to a different part of the map, you'd be like, Oh, that thing. Yeah. And you'll start, you know, using the shovel to dig up everything or hit everything with sticks or grappling hook. That one elf that's blocking you from escaping the, uh, so what's the woods, uh, lost woods or which, which elf are you talking about?
00:39:44
Speaker
There's one near the start of the game in Ocarina of Time. Hmm. Who's like blocking the way. Oh, you mean the, the kid who's blocking the way to the Deku tree. Yeah. I think you have to like get a weapon or something to actually kill him. Yes. Right. And let it go. Or you do the speed run straps and just like find a way to side jump past him or whatever nonsense they do. Um,
00:40:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's, I think that, that is the puzzle formula for legend of Zelda. It's basically like present problem. It's obviously unsolvable or hopefully obviously unsolvable. And then introduce tool later, you can come back and solve it. Bombs, boomerang, hook shot, all of that, all of the different types of arrows.
00:40:33
Speaker
Um, it's really common to do it that way. Breath of the Wild actually doesn't do it that way. And it's kind of out of necessity. And I sort of miss it from the older older games. Well, from what I've heard and seen a Breath of the Wild.
00:40:50
Speaker
Like you said, it is out of necessity because it is open world. Yeah. But being able to approach it in that way of, I could climb this mountain or I could stasis this rock, beat the shit out of it, jump on the rock, or maybe you can fly. I don't know what other options you have. You can like use the glider and stuff.
00:41:10
Speaker
I think like so like ocarina of time has very like linear structure for the most part until you get to some of the temples then you have some choices but like as a kid you have to collect each of the gems to complete like the spiritual gem whatever the key basically to get in the temple of time
00:41:33
Speaker
Well, you don't complete the triforce because you would get the triforce when you claim the, um, the master sword, but link isn't ready for it. Huh? I didn't really play this. I know that's fine. But like, as a kid, you have to like complete these, these dungeons. Um, like, uh, Jabu Jabu's belly, which was like in Zora's domain, the Goron place can't remember. And, uh, forest place.
00:41:58
Speaker
Anyways, yeah. Did you play this game? Yeah. Um, but, uh, after you completed all that, then you can be an adult, go through, do all like the hard mode kind of adult dungeons. Um, and then kind of go to the culminated fight once you freed all the sages with Ganon, right? This is massive contrast. Cause this game is like stupid long, unless you actually know how to play slash like, or an adult. And then it's like.
00:42:23
Speaker
25% of the time. Um, you can contrast that whole thing with Breath of the Wild, where as soon as you get out of the tutorial plateau, you can technically go fight Ganon. And if you beat him, you win the game.
00:42:43
Speaker
Ten minutes? Yeah. Like the speed run something like 13 minutes for Breath of the Wild. Yeah. Because people just like hyper speed launch themselves to Hyrule Castle, fight Ganon and end the game. It's like it's not easy, but because they don't have all these storyline kind of touch points, these like they know that you've beaten the forest temple by the time you get to the shadow temple in Ocarina of Time.
00:43:11
Speaker
So they can assume you have all of these items. You can't do that in Breath of the Wild, so instead they just didn't put any item gates in there.
00:43:21
Speaker
Are you implying that item gates are a, or sorry, certain story touch points, we'll call them. Certain doors in the game storyline. Do you say that detracts from an RPG or from a game being an RPG? I almost feel like it does because like I really enjoyed Breath of the Wild.
RPG Elements and Game Design Evolution
00:43:40
Speaker
I think it's great. And I played it like conventionally, like go through, beat all the spirits or whatever, collect a bunch of items, do all my stuff.
00:43:49
Speaker
had a lot of fun with it, but I never had an experience that was like playing Majora's Mask and like getting the ice arrows and being able to like freeze a path across water to reach like a new location or like the first time you like fire a light arrow at somebody and it like creates a massive rupee for some reason because like people drop tons of money if you hit them with light arrows like
00:44:16
Speaker
you miss out on all of those experiences if you just take it from the game and
00:44:24
Speaker
I don't know. It takes some of the, it's interesting, I think, particularly for Breath of the Wild, because they have a bunch of puzzle solving pieces with the physics. You can kind of think back to like Portal and how like physics themselves became so integral to the puzzles, like what you can do with a gravity gun in Half-Life. Like all of those experiences are all pretty much there in Breath of the Wild, but you're using the exact same tool set for the whole thing, for like the trials.
00:44:54
Speaker
Um, but you don't really get new toys. It's always that. Should I buy you some new toys? I know the site. It's BA dragon, I think.
00:45:09
Speaker
There might be another D in there. I don't know. I'd like to be a dragon. Um, but yeah, I don't know. I can't remember exactly how we got onto that. We're talking about legend of Zelda, but there's, there's a huge difference between what Zelda is now and what it was. Um, it's very different. It's less lonely though.
00:45:32
Speaker
There's something like intrinsically like isolated sometimes for playing some of these old RPGs where I'm just like, it doesn't feel like you're interacting with other characters really. No, I would say typically you're not.
00:45:48
Speaker
I like that you're like, where are you going with this? Yeah, I'm also trying to think of other examples. Because when I played through Ocarina of Time, I looked back on that and I spent so much time just running around in the dark as Link playing songs to change the daytime. So I don't get assaulted by skeletons or freeze redeads and all this nonsense. But you play it by yourself, plus Navi, who doesn't count for anything.
00:46:18
Speaker
Yeah, you don't really have a party in that game so much
00:46:22
Speaker
Yeah. And it's, uh, it's kind of isolationist, almost compared to like new games because like, there's some really animated characters and, um, divinity, for instance, like there's some really interesting characters you can encounter in that game. Every character is interesting. Yeah. All right. You said divinity enough times. I said it once. So, uh, one of the reasons that divinity two is the best game ever. Yeah.
00:46:52
Speaker
It really just offers... I'm never going to have an episode on it. I don't think I ever can. Right. But I'm just going to bring it up in every episode. Right. We don't want to kill the cow that's producing the milk for this episode. Like the entire podcast. Apparently on your chalkboards. How many times did I mention Divinity 2?
00:47:10
Speaker
But it really offers a lot in the way of Every character inside thing every blade of grass is essentially put there for a reason. Yeah There's just so much content in the game on its own But also as we were mentioning before with like the different ways to play and how you approach situations You can do some janky shit. Yeah many a times
00:47:36
Speaker
We figured out early in the game, if you're having a difficult fight, and you're in dialogue with somebody who's like, I'm gonna fight you. Once you've been in combat, you can have somebody else who's controlling other members of the party.
00:47:51
Speaker
Position outside of the fight before the fight starts. Yeah, so when the fight starts you can backstab somebody or my favorite way You can pick up objects in the game as any character Yeah, the stronger you are the heavier items you can pick up and you can reposition them if you're not in combat It doesn't cost you anything. Yeah, so what I did For a certain fight. I was fighting some bishop. She was like him in like his two guards next to him and
00:48:17
Speaker
So I put these giant murals on any side of him. And then I put my beefy guy in there and I was like, welcome to the thumbnail, bitch. The fight started, I started using AOE abilities, or knockdown abilities, and I just chain these combos into him. And it's so good.
00:48:38
Speaker
But it has everything as far as you have like this slow level of progression. So it feels meaningful when you do get those stats or if you get points for, Oh, I can now get a passive ability.
00:48:54
Speaker
So every time I hit somebody, there's like a percent chance that something else will also happen. Right. Or like, Oh, maybe that can be better at lock picking. Or you have somebody who is really good at just talking to people to try and get prices down. Right. You have that unit buy everything traded amongst the other players. It's just all of these things that you can do in game universe.
00:49:15
Speaker
that adds to the investment. And on top of that, like I said, every character is a storyline. Even if your character is not a story character, you're there along for the ride and you can dictate your interactions with people.
00:49:32
Speaker
And you mentioned that like the progression was like still slow, but there's so many like dopamine kind of drips and divinity for like figuring things out or getting like non just level based progression. You're unlocking like perks or you're finding like other cool adjustments you can make to your party that like it really contrasts to the pacing of most of the other games we've talked about up to this point, like where it's almost like.
00:49:59
Speaker
an inspired drought of content in some of these other games or like really cool systems that you have to spend time manipulating once every hour in divinity, it's like, there's always something cool just around the corner. Yes.
Divinity 2 Features and Player Agency
00:50:15
Speaker
And that's probably what makes it accessible in like the modern age, right? Like, um, like I've, I've played games like, uh, Baldur's Gate, like
00:50:26
Speaker
that were the precursors to Divinity. Actually, Larian Studios is making Baldur's Gate 3.
00:50:33
Speaker
um larry and made divinity 2 for us yes yeah what you guys didn't know that geez not true fans but some of you haven't even beaten divinity 2 you're like the fuck is divinity 2 but uh the the pacing in those games feels significantly slower than divinity and it's interesting because they're using very similar systems it's just probably um advanced dungeons and dragons for
00:51:03
Speaker
Baldur's Gate, whereas Larian's kind of made their own thing for divinity That's just D&D-esque But there are other things in that space like I think Dreadfire. There's another one that came out recently that I cannot remember the name of the life of me. It's more of a
00:51:25
Speaker
It's a Fred dryer, actually. It's more of a 1600s. Oh, is this a greed fall? Greed fall. Yeah. Greed fall and dread fire. I think dread fire came out year and a half ago to two years ago. Yeah. Greed fall was just recently announced or just came out. It just came out, yeah. It looks interesting, but it seems to be in that same space where it's a very in-depth and indie gritty type of RPG.
00:51:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's gotten like, okay reviews. I was like, I was on the fence. I was like, do I just buy this? And then people were like, ah, you can kind of feel the jank and a little bit of the indie. And I'm just like, ah, I've got so much other games I need to play. I'll wait a bit. Sorry, greedful, but how it is.
00:52:12
Speaker
another thing in divinity who i really enjoyed is uh, we've definitely gotten into some encounters where i'm like I'm under leveled for this shit. Yeah, because you just like make a wrong turn. You're like, oh well, technically I found this key to this one thing What if it happens if I go here and then it's like this giant dude's like i'm gonna murder you No, it's like party's gone. Yeah Yeah, they're not really they're not afraid to Like hit you with difficulty. Yeah, it's
00:52:40
Speaker
Some other games usually if it's a huge spike you're not quote unquote supposed to be there yet Yeah, um, they always have options for that's kind of how we determined where to go in the game, right? Just like this seems way too difficult walk into it Okay, this seems reasonable yeah That's interesting like there's some some at this point. It's an older RPG like oblivion was like that. They had um
00:53:08
Speaker
They had scaled leveling for like a lot of things. Actually, was Bolivian like that?
00:53:13
Speaker
Nevermind. There's an Oblivion mod that was like that. Oblivion was probably the point where that was no longer the case, really. Everything basically scaled to you. And, uh, Larian's clearly not beholden to that concept. Like many, many things scale now in modern RPGs. Um, like whether that be Skyrim or Oblivion or like to some extent, like it feels like Dragon Age. Um, not exclusively, like there are some unleveled fights in Dragon Age, but
00:53:43
Speaker
Right I think there's a time and a place for it because obviously it would be a little bit awkward if you were just Dicking around in the beginner area for like let's say 30 hours, right? Yeah now you're super overleveled for like the next five chapters of content. Mm-hmm
00:54:01
Speaker
It's kind of janky, but like hey, that's what you did. And that's your way to play, right? Right. Some people want that. It feels weird to be like super overpowered, crushing everything for the next boss. And it's like, we're exactly matched. Next boss after that, exactly. Exactly matched. And you never feel like you have a jump in difficulty or anything else. Yeah. It should, I think it should be variable. There are times you should be like, I got away on the, by the nape of my skin.
00:54:29
Speaker
Yeah, nape of the nape of the neck tail a tail of the neck nape of the that was a close one, right? Or something like manic fresh that engagement Yeah, i'm trying to remember the the idiom now and I can't but um, I guess i'm just an idiom Which is a combination of idiot and dumb Yeah, it's
00:54:55
Speaker
It's, it's something I'm still, I'm still not sure about really to this day. I feel like a lot of things on this list want to make you feel like a hero. Cause most, I can see it. Almost all RPGs make you the hero. That's fine.
00:55:10
Speaker
actually it's a very different experience to not be the hero per se like to make people just a person um it's like we do that at our jobs like we're just people at our jobs sometimes you want to play hero or villain or whatever um but
00:55:30
Speaker
If constant leveling is on, then like you mentioned, it's not like there's nothing that feels like a real challenge. It's always, you know that whatever you're fighting has been scaled to you. So it may be slightly challenging, but you'll overcome it. Like they're never going to put a wall in there and say, Hey, you're not heroic enough.
00:55:49
Speaker
I think I beat Oblivion at level 4 because I was using efficient leveling and it was pretty hilarious actually. But I think that something a game like Divinity does is they're like, you didn't put any investment in your character?
00:56:06
Speaker
You didn't like cover your bases. You don't have adaptive items in your inventory. You're not willing to deal with statuses. You're not willing to like deal with How you're placed in the battle, you know, like are you dealing are you handling tactics properly? If you're answered no to all of these questions, like don't play like oh, yeah it will it will royally fuck you sometimes and that like I was gonna say that feels good and that feels good royally No, it feels good to have
00:56:36
Speaker
Wow, I was going to say another thing. It has risk of it, but there can be no payoff to overcoming a challenge unless there's actually a challenge or at least the risk of a challenge. And games like Divinity are like, we're going to be really challenging, especially if you play on higher difficulties and you need to be on your game. You're struggling up this hill and the reward is going to be you do become godlike or whatever.
00:57:06
Speaker
Um, I think that that games that give you that progression feel better for it. 100% true. In the same way, I appreciate that cheesy Gordita crunch will make me feel terrible afterwards. It is something I must overcome. Right. The other thing we have to overcome is figuring out how to end our episodes.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:57:31
Speaker
What time are we at? I don't know. 50, 57 minutes? Just kidding. Let's not finish the episode. What else we got here? I had Mass Effect in here. I had like a couple games. This was one of the interesting ones because I don't know if it really is that much of an RPG.
00:57:48
Speaker
I would, it kind of is, but because I don't play it as much. So I'm going to give you the squinty eyes. Sure. I would say something like Skyrim definitely is because you can level yourself wildly differently and approach things. However you want, you can access the whole world at a given point in time. So you can really choose how you are playing that character on your percent. Right.
00:58:12
Speaker
I think like personal choice, it's hard to be a game like Skyrim where it's just like here are literally all the skills, all the options. Yes, you're going to be a stealth archer, but you have options not to be like great. You know, um, I have a, I actually put some points in the backstab, but the backstab actually has to be, uh, with a bow and arrow. You have to lash them together and just kind of nudge them.
00:58:39
Speaker
I can't remember if we ever had a Skyrim episode or if we just talked about it, but backstab is probably, we've not had a Skyrim episode. The, I think we literally wrote up like notes for it and everything. The only real memorable moment I have from Skyrim is like the time that I one hit killed a dragon by backstabbing it while it was like sleeping on one of those word walls. Oh yeah.
00:59:03
Speaker
and I came down the mountain above it which meant like I reloaded five times because I kept hitting angles where I'd fall and die and I had the the jester's gloves which doubled your backstab damage and then all the backstab perks and then a dagger which is like uh smith to really high damage got up right below it then it took off and I was like oh okay so then I reloaded and I went got right down below it and then I
00:59:33
Speaker
Power attacked it. Um, and it straight up died. It just died and fell down. I'm like, I'm done. But didn't that feel great to invest all that time for little ward, but to feel like a bad-ass? Yeah, it felt really awesome. And something I actually, uh, kind of don't get in Skyrim that much anymore is because everything's leveled in the base game. Like.
01:00:03
Speaker
You aren't challenged and you can't overcome something to become, have that BA moment of being awesome. Um, that's what BA stands for, being awesome. And, uh, I don't know. I don't know.
01:00:21
Speaker
What's funny is I put a stupid amount of time into Skyrim and I'd still trash talk it. I put probably hundreds of hours into it at this point. And I still feel like it's a step in the wrong direction for the genre.
01:00:37
Speaker
I like how we spent all this time talking about RPGs, but didn't touch JRPGs. That's true. Cause I won't Q Q Jake. Yeah. Oh, there's a lot here. Probably too much, honestly.
01:00:57
Speaker
No, I'm saying take us out. Take us out. Play us off keyboard. I'd like to thank everybody for coming out. As always, you can email us your questions, comments, and concerns at soapstonepodcast at gmail.com. Or if you'd like, you can join discussion on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstonepodcast.gmail.com. Right. Also a great place to come out. I'd like to thank everyone for coming out.
01:01:25
Speaker
You're probably listening to this on Spotify or you've clicked the Facebook link. But we always do appreciate any likes, comments, feedback, occasion we'll get emails of.
01:01:37
Speaker
Hey, you guys aren't shit. But maybe cover these topics. If there's something you want us to cover in future episodes, if there's something you want us to retroactively cover, that's harder to do. Go back and edit this one episode. Please mention more JRPGs. Thank you. You're just like, this episode sucks. Redo it. We've never had anybody request that. I would seriously consider it, depending on the episode. We have redone one episode. Yeah.
01:02:06
Speaker
Overwatch oh Yeah, we totally did we totally did I still say one day we upload the audio of just you talking I don't even know if I have it. Oh, well, I probably do Send it to me. I'll make it fun. Yeah All right. Well, thank you guys for listening as always. We'll see in the next one
01:02:36
Speaker
the the the
01:03:17
Speaker
you
01:03:53
Speaker
you